Robinson, 25, had gone to the apartments to pick up his younger brother, who was visiting a friend. The gunman shot him eight times, his mom said.

Some witnesses said they saw Robinson arguing with two black men shortly before he was killed, Normore said. She believes that whoever shot her son knew him because her son was shot at close range.

Records show Robinson had his own brush with authorities involving a dispute with an ex-girlfriend in 2008. But he was growing through the church, his mother said. Robinson was getting ready to train to be a deacon at his church. He was looking forward to giving his first sermon, which he was supposed to deliver six days after he was shot. He'd made his mom promise to be there.

His mother described Robinson as a caring person with a good heart, always trying to help, a protector.

Robinson and his fiancée were making plans to get married on Aug. 10, 2010 — his mother's birthday.

“Whoever took this young man’s life, they took a good man,” Normore said. “They took somebody that would’ve given them his last dollar out of his pocket. They took someone from his little brothers that looked up to him, and his sister who looked up to him. They took a young man that was hardworking.”

Normore said her son's death turned their family upside down.

“Nothing is the same,” she said.

JoNita Normore and her three sons. Robinson is behind her. Photo provided

After Ra’Mon’s death, Normore’s husband developed dementia. He died in 2013. Normore’s 27-year-old stepdaughter also died that year.

After her son’s death, Normore said she hung posters at apartment complexes around her neighborhood. She went out in the middle of the night to places she knew gang members frequented and confronted them because detectives told her the person or people who killed her son might have been involved with gangs. Normore stayed up every night, even when she had to work the next morning. She had no fear because she was so angry and shocked by her son’s death.

“I’ve never committed a crime or anything, but when my son was first murdered, I wanted to,” Normore said. “But I knew I couldn’t. That’s just a mother’s love wanting to go out there and find who murdered their child. But it would not have done me any good. It would have messed my family up even more. Ra’Mon wouldn’t have wanted that.”

The anger she felt almost destroyed her, Normore said. When her husband got sick, it forced her to focus on caring for him instead of trying to track down Ra'Mon’s killer. Normore believes that saved her.

Normore recalled the last messages she left for detectives. Before her husband died, she called to see if police had any new information she could share with her husband. She said she never heard back.

“It just made me distrust our justice system,” Normore said.

She said she feels like police have stopped looking for Ra'Mon's killer.

“My son became another statistic,” she said. “Just another statistic. Another young man dead, but see, my family’s going to deal with this for the rest of our lives.”

These days, after work, Normore spends much of her time locked in her house. That's where she feels safest.

“I’m not going to walk looking over my shoulders, but at the same time, I have to be very vigilant because I don’t know who murdered Ra’Mon,” Normore said.

There are some days when she comes home from work expecting to see Ra’Mon sitting at the table. She still picks up the phone sometimes and dials his number. Some days, she sits in her car during her lunch break and cries. Her three-bedroom home feels empty.

Normore doesn’t celebrate Christmas anymore because Ra’Mon was killed 11 days before Christmas. She finds strength in God and in her church community and tries to give strength to others, but sunny days don’t look the same to her. Nothing is bright anymore, she said.

"I don’t wish anything bad on anyone, I really don’t, but deep down in my heart, I pray that I’ll live long enough to see whoever murdered my son be brought to justice," Normore said. "My husband wasn’t able to do that. My daughter wasn’t able to do that. I want to be able to live to see justice brought."